Providers who use OnApp’s stack in conjunction with SolidFire’s new storage systems can now offer customers guaranteed input/output operations per second (IOPS) as a new billable variable, alongside more common variables such as CPU, storage space and RAM.

Specifically, providers can use OnApp’s control panel – now integrated with SolidFire’s API – to specify minimum, maximum and burst IOPS, if the right equipment is in place. Exposing the SolidFire interfaces directly to the hypervisor makes it possible to give each customer effective storage isolation, even when multiple virtual machines are running on the same hypervisor.

Kosten Metreweli, OnApp’s chief commercial officer, admitted that there aren’t yet many providers running OnApp’s stack who also offer SolidFire all-SSD storage, but he said the integration represented “new opportunities.”

“We try be as neutral as possible about the hardware that our service providers use. We have our own storage products as well that would be an alternative here, but we try to make sure our customers can make use of what they want to.

“You’ve always had the capability to plug in most types of third-party SAN into the OnApp platform, but what’s different here is coming across a SAN that has very specific capabilities that make sense to expose to the end customer, like the ability to guarantee IOPS. The unique thing is the integration – it’s exposed all the way to the end user and [we make sure it’s] all going to be metered and billed appropriately as well. It takes a loss of hassle out of the hands of the service provider who wants to take advantage of it.”

Echoing CloudSigma, a Zurich-based cloud provider that also recently went with SolidFire’s new systems, Metreweli added that the features would reassure customers such as ecommerce outfits that they can put their high-performance workloads in the cloud.